XDefiant PSA: You need to manually activate the GSK major challenge to unlock the new faction

Preseason is well and truly over, as XDefiant Season 1 gives players a fresh major challenge to unlock the new Rainbow Six-themed GSK faction. Much like unlocking DedSec, this latest challenge tasks you with earning 700,000 XP before you can start playing as one of the ballistic helmet-wearing, Riot Shield-toting characters. However, some players are discovering a minor snag that may cause your grind towards unlocking the GSK to take a little longer.

Some players on Reddit have discovered that you need to activate the latest major challenge first before it starts counting the experience you earn. Yes, this means if you jumped into a match immediately after Ubisoft launched XDefiant Season 1, some of the XP you acquired for the GSK may have all been for naught. This may be because some have not finished the previous DedSec major challenge yet. However, a few players have also pointed out that the new major challenge doesn’t automatically activate even if you do.

Unsurprisingly, the community launched a wave of complaints after discovering this latest issue, as some had apparently spent hours playing the game before finding out. One player even claimed that this was “intentional” on Ubisoft’s part (which, we need to point out, is mere speculation). As of this writing, the XDefiant dev team has yet to respond to these criticisms. However, given how communicative they’ve been throughout the preseason, it may only be a matter of time before they provide a fix to this latest problem.

Now, if you’re having trouble activating the latest major challenge, it’s simpler than you think. All you need to do is navigate to the Challenges tab via the main menu and select the “Major” tab. Then, select the GSK faction and press the “Activate Challenge” button above the “Unlock Now” option. If you don’t want to grind out 700,000 XP, you can unlock it using in-game currency instead, though it will cost you 1,000 XCoins (around $10).